A Brunch to Remember (Mom)

Last Saturday was June 23rd, which would have been my mother's 61st birthday.  I remember when she turned 40.  And I remember the following year when my dad turned 40.  I remember those as moments that they shared with each other, but that they also shared with us kids.  They taught us how to be happy for someone other than ourselves - to celebrate another's birthday by making them feel loved.  They helped us think of gifts to buy them so that we could experience the joy of giving.  And of course, my parents were great gift-receivers.  I remember my mom expressing so much happiness when she opened my present of 3 blue pens.  They were her favorite kind after all, but I only knew that because my dad helped me to see it!

It's been 13 years since my mom died.  Each year when Jun 23rd rolls around it feels a little different.  This year, I felt that cooking myself a very Abigail-style brunch would a good way to pay tribute to the memories I have of my mom.  Cooking is something I really enjoy doing.  Being here in this apartment for just over a month, cooking is still a bit of an experimental process.  I cook a lot of things Thai style: stir-fries over rice.  Sounds so simple, and perhaps it is.  But with the huge variety of vegetables (some which I've only eaten a few times, let alone ever actually cooked myself) and various kinds of cooking sauces, each meal I've cooked here has been pretty unique.  They each usually end up being a bit of a process, with some turning out really well and some turning out, well, just all right!  So when this meal turned out so tasty and balanced, it made me really happy!  I think my mother would be happy to see me being so happy.

Actually, my mother would possibly be rolling with laughter to see me eat something like this: ผัดผักบุ้ง (pad phak boong = stir fried morning glory).  Vegetables, especially the green ones, were pretty much the bane of my existence when I was growing up.  My mom tried sooo hard to get me to eat peas, beans, spinach, and other stuff that fell in my "gross" category.  But I do also remember picking peas from the backyard garden with my mom, then sitting on the back porch together to "pod" them. Plunk plunk plunk! - Raw round bouncy peas dropping into a metal pot.  Even though I had vowed to never eat peas, after planting the wrinkly dried seeds into the ground, watering the garden with a hose, seeing the plants sprout up, waiting for the pods to grow big and plump, picking them, then learning how to squeeze open the pods.... that day I was willing to open my mind just a liiiiitle bit and try them again.  Raw that is.  I ate them right out of the pod, and you know what?  I actually liked them!  Amazing how a real food-growing experience trumps eating peas from a metal can.

I also liked raw mushrooms as a kid. Fungus has only grown on me (not literally) since then, and it's been fun to try different kinds of mushrooms here.  This one I sliced up and stir fried with some mushroom soy sauce:

It's kind of like soy sauce, but it's made with only 40% soy beans. 27% is mushroom, and then it also has sugar, wheat flour and salt water. You can use it for stir frying other vegetables, too, not just mushrooms.  With this dish, I also added a little of this tangy-sour-slightly sweet sauce made from tamarinds:

Most traditional Thai dishes combine the elements of sweet, spicy, sour and salty.  So I use that idea a lot when I cook, to bring multiple elements of flavor to each dish.  The mushroom sauce brought the salty and the tamarind brought the sour and a little bit of sweetness.  It all balanced together nicely, and the dish turned out quite tasty!

I also had some tofu to go along with the mushrooms and morning glory.  First I made a dipping sauce, composed of soy sauce, sesame oil, diced garlic, sliced Thai chili peppers, and green onions.  Then I sliced up the tofu and deep fried it in oil until the pieces were light brown.

I've never really deep fried anything before, but I wanted to try it.

I just turned the tofu chunks around in the hot oil for a few minutes.  Actually, they tasted just ok; not as tasty as I've had it in restaurants around Thailand.  Mine were kinda crunchy and hard.  I was going for light and crispy.  Hopefully I just cooked them for too long and can do better next time.  Either way, tofu is really just the excuse to eat the dipping sauce - I love these kinds of sauces!

I actually had a lot of flavors swirling around on my plate.  The brown jasmine rice brought them all together nicely. And of course, having some fresh fruit for dessert didn't hurt (banana and papaya)!

I have many great memories of my mom.  I can't create new ones with her.  But I can create new ones in her honor.  And that's a good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

What I Brought Home From Korea

Yes, all THAT is what I brought home from Korea. I went on a little bit of a shopping spree at E-Mart, spending about $30 on Korean vegan ramyun (ramen, maMA, whatever you may call it!), gochujang (red pepper paste), ssamjang (a soybean based dipping sauce), and gim (sheets of dried and salted seaweed). You can see the bulk of the stash is five 4-packs of Korean ramyun - 순라면.  This is the only vegan brand of ramyun I know of in Korea.  There is some vegan "maMA" as it's called here in Thailand, but I just had to stock up on the Korean brand while I was there!  Anyway, 5 times 4 is 20, so let's see... if I stay in Thailand for 12 months before I get another chance to go back to Korea, that means I can have a dinner of my favorite ramyun about... once every 18 days. Hmm...

Well, I've already gone through two packs! Couldn't help it... when you have one of those evenings, or one of those weekend afternoons, when you really just want a quick and easy meal to satisfy your salty/spicy/scrumptious cravings, ramyun is pretty much perfect! The first pack I whipped up just normal style, minimal effort. Hot and spicy, salty, soooo satisfying.

For the next pack, I got the idea to add some edamame. I had bought a big bag at Chiang Mai's Walking Street for about 50 Baht ($1.75). I love snacking on these, but wasn't sure how they'd taste with ramyun.

Turns out, they make a pretty good pair!
I shelled the edamame and popped them straight into my bowl of steaming noodles. I decided not to add them into the pot while the ramyun was cooking so that they'd stay a bit chewy and crunchy. The combination of hot and slurpy ramyun with cold and chewy beans was really nice.

The edamame also made a good pair with the ramyun by balancing out the salty, greasy "goodness" with a huge punch of nutrients.  Not kidding. Check out edamame's ridiculously high levels of fiber, protein, iron, calcium, folate, thiamin, riboflavin, and vitamins B6, C, and K (click here).

I haven't gotten a chance to use the gochujang and ssamjang yet. But the Gim will be making a blog appearance soon...

In addition to a bunch of packaged food, I did bring home something completely not mass produced.

A loaf of Mipa's homemade carrot cake!  Mipa surprised me with this farewell gift as I was packing my bags to leave her apartment.  I rationed it over the next few breakfasts back in my apartment.

One morning I had a few slices with some Thai fruit that I think is called langsat. It's similar to longan (ลำไย - "lamyay"), but the main difference is that it has sections; longan is just one round piece. Langsat is juicy, sweet and a little sour; nice and refreshing in the morning.

It grows on a bunch, like this. It's not too hard to peel, but the skin is extremely sticky. Even after I wash my hands and the knife, there's still a tacky residue!  Ugly yellow skin, almost as bad as super glue.. but still a very tasty fruit!

I have to say, eating Korean ramyun in Thailand is kinda fun. Whenever I have a chance to merge my worlds, even just in a small way, it makes me really happy. Kinda like this picture:

You can't see exactly what I'm smiling about, so I'll tell you.  This was somewhere around Hongdae area of Seoul.  Lots of Korean restaurants and cafes obviously, such as the one on the left in the background.  Then I saw the big yellow sign in Spanish: el Avion. Ooh, two languages I know!  And THEN, I saw that the orange-signed restaurant was Thai!  Ahh!  Tic-tac-toe three in a row!  My worlds combine! haha!

떡 떡 Daily Ddeok!

While I was in Korea last week, I had a mental list of all the foods I wanted to make sure to eat during my precious seven days there. Sun Tubu Jiggae, Bibimbap, Kimbap, Pa Jeon.... I did manage to get Bibimbap more than once, Kimbap just once, and even squeeze in Sun Tubu for my very last meal. However, there is one food that I ate in one form or another pretty much every day: Ddeok!

"Ddeok" (떡) actually refers to a pretty wide range of snack and dessert-type foods that are made with rice flour, usually taking the form of a rice cake or nugget. As you can see, they're often very pretty and colorful. Ball-shaped ones like those above, have a bean paste filling, and some kind of powder on the outside. A package usually costs about 1,500 KRW (about US$1.25), or sometimes just 1,000 KRW if you catch an end of the day sale! You can find ddeok stands/shops pretty much all over the place, but definitely around every few corners in any local neighborhood.

All of the rice cakes in this packet of green, black, yellow and red had the same red bean filling, but I think each color had a different flavor. Hard to remember what each one was, but I think the green was green tea and the black/brown tasted a bit like chocolate! Regardless, they went great with this apple cinnamon tea that Mipa had at home. They're chewy enough to stick to your teeth a bit, but still soft enough to melt in your mouth, and sweetened just enough to be pleasantly sweet but not rich.
This form of ddeok, however, is quite bold on flavors: ddeokbokki:

Ddeokbokki (떡볶이) is made with a bunch of sugar, but it also has tons of spice! Yes, red pepper flakes AND red pepper paste (고추장). The solid tubes of white rice cakes are dripping with a sweet and spicy sauce that makes your lips burn and your nose run. I wouldn't want to eat this every day (but many people do - it's definitely a favorite food among many Koreans), but I certainly couldn't pass up eating it once during my short stay.

Although you can buy ddeokbokki at restaurants, its availability is far outnumbered among street stalls. Typically, various tempura are sold alongside it (vegetables like potatoes and yams, rice rolled in sheets of seaweed, and some meats). All of these can be dipped in the fiery red sauce. Also, ddeokbokki stands usually sell odeng (오뎅), which is fish cake. It's kind of hard to describe... Fish paste congealed/cooked into strips and fried or cooked in a broth-like soup. They're sold on a stick, but are also usually chopped up and cooked in with the ddeokbokki. We did check out multiple ddeokbokki stands, hoping one might leave the odeng out, but no such luck. We decided we could live with it, so Mipa just asked the lady to not scoop any odeng into our cup. And it was fine. Fine? I mean divine!

haha, ok, that's an exaggeration. I do like ddeokbokki. But it is those displays of multi-colored ddeok that catch my eye every time!

This one was located at Mipa's subway station, so I passed it all the time!

Some ddeok is more like a floury cake (squares in front of picture), often with raisins, fruit or nuts; others are more dense and moist, sometimes with a liquid filling (the pink, white and green on the top right). This ddeok stand also had other snacks and goodies, like nuts, seeds, dried fruits, and crunchy concoctions. Talk about an accidentally vegan snack stand!

I bought these crunchy seaweed sticks. They were actually more sweet than salty, which is interesting for seaweed... but still perfectly munchable.

I ate them that afternoon with some ddeok.

The white one is one of my favorites. My first Korean boss taught me that it's called "moshi," because of its Japanese origin. She also told me that it's good for your stomach lining. Yes... Why? Because it has such a smooth texture, like you would want your stomach lining to be. It does have a verrrry silky smooth texture, but who knows. And the powder is so fine that I usually end up breathing some into my lungs! Moshi is always a little larger than the colored ones (which means more bean filling!). I don't know if it's a little sweeter than other ddeok or what, but despite (maybe because of) its very subdued flavor, I enjoy it more than any of the colored/flavored ones!

I also bought this interesting "pine bud" drink to accompany my snack. If you've ever climbed a pine tree and got sap on your hands and then ended up licking your hands, you know that sap is bitter and gross - even if it has a hint of "pine scent." This drink tasted like pine, pure pine. It wasn't bitter, or sweet, or salty. Just cool, piney and fresh. Mipa thought it tasted like soap, but I actually liked it! Even while enjoying the familiar, there's always something new to try!